Oh no! How will we cope without transportation for our privets?

Actually if you really understood Peak oil you would know that oil should be cheapest at the very peak.

At peak the rate of production is at its highest.
However the price of oil is based on supply versus demand. Even before peaking supply can outstrip demand - what is sure is that once the peak is reached supply will decrease.

The Britain-led Nato will not include Germany, and will comprise generally pro-US states like Spain, Poland, Romania, Portugal, and the Czech Republic.

The reporter shows a very poor understanding of european politics. Tony Blair (uk primeminister) would be incapable to get the backing of parliment and the public for any attack against Iran - it is now generally assumed that he will stand down before the end of his term due to a collapse in his popularity because of his backing of the iraq war.

Zapatero (spanish primeminister)was always againt the iraq war and was elected on this basis. He would never agree to a war on iran.

This would give rise to a very reduced coalition of the unwilling (last time it was the uk plus a few token jests from other countries).

Peak Oil is here.

Dick Cheney in a 1999 speech he gave while still CEO of Halliburton, stated:

"By some estimates, there will be an average of two-percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead,along with, conservatively, a three-percent natural decline in production from existing reserves.That means by 2010 we
will need on the order of anadditional 50 million barrels a day."

But, before to enter in a global economic collapse, Israel will attack Iran between August and November.And the US will going with him.

From Newsinsight:
Going after Iran.The US prepares for the Third Gulf War.

"Yesterday, we published intelligence of US forward planning to attack Iran for its clandestine WMD programme (“ US prepared for Iran war with split Nato”), and it has come within days of the French/ Dutch rejection of the European Union (EU) constitution. We foresaw this possibility (Commentary, “Good morning, America,” 3 June 2005), but events have rolled faster than we expected.

The man leading the Iran war-planning is the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and in almost a repeat of George W.Bush’s first term, he has gone about the task of coalition-building for the war excluding the secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice. There are no stories yet of squabbles between them, as were replete between Rumsfeld and Bush’s first-term secretary of state Colin Powell, but things could get there as the war fever hots up.

According to our intelligence, the plan to attack Iran will gather pace after certain crucial debates in the US Congress in July. The broad idea is to go with another “coalition of the willing” against Iran as in the First and not so much the Second Gulf War, and a Britain-led Nato will be a key player in that coalition. Diplomatic sources say that since the EU constitution was rejected by France and The Netherlands, Rumsfeld has been planning and succeeded in dividing Nato for the Iran war.

The Britain-led Nato will not include Germany, and will comprise generally pro-US states like Spain, Poland, Romania, Portugal, and the Czech Republic. With the exclusion of Germany, France will not be able – or as able as before – to put spokes in the war preparation. With the European Union tottering and the Euro getting hammered in the markets, French resistance will be weak against a second war in the Middle East in two years.

But despite what we wrote, the Iran war so soon, and with the boundless acrimony it is sure to generate, is surprising on another level, and that is seeing the general nature of second-term US presidents, who turn to the enterprise of making themselves look good to history. The first term of Bush we all know, when an almost evangelical America attacked Saddam for non-existence WMDs, a fact known to the president, the CIA, and the neo-conservatives lead by the vice-president, Dick Cheney.

Cheney is less in evidence now, the neo-cons also appear to have had their day or term, as you like it, or they may be lying low, and generally, the fur is not flying about America, not since, at least, the Iraq elections, and the EU harakiri. But Iran war preparations and the war eventually will return the spotlights and hate on America, and a classical second-term US president should not like that.

So why is Rumsfeld hammering another coalition into shape, but more controversially, attempting to hammer Germany and France out of shape? Perhaps, there is no other option. The European Union tried through non-offensive means to get Iran to de-weaponise, but not only Iran thumbed its nose at them, it threatened Scud attacks on Israel, and is shopping around in Africa for dirty bombs, that is bombs that can spread radioactive death through conventional explosion, without triggering a nuclear holocaust. But it is terrible, such a bomb, all the same, and the Al-Qaeda has come close to having it from the nuclear blackmarket since 9/ 11.

In other words, Iran has threatened state terrorism against Israel and other US interests in the Middle East, and the EU has done nothing about it. A while ago, a US thinktank got together ex-US and former EU diplomats for a game battle of nerves against Iran, and the EU lost every time. Its diplomats just could not pitch for an offensive against Iran. Without the threat of exercise of the final option, that is offensive action, no adversary will bend, and Iran just got the EU to bend and bend on its weaponisation programme.(...)"

Another point ANWR is simply not relevant to the issues of world oil price. It’s not a terribly large find and the Alaskan pipeline only has so much throughput, currently it can only deliver a little over I million bpd IF (and that is a very big if), we had the tankers to haul it.

Finally the flat earth economists would tell you that as prices rise that investment in discovery and extraction technology will rise, and that is not happening, in fact it is going down as companies scramble to bid on claims and contracts of existing reserves. This has been pretty well documented.

Oh and fuel cells right now and for the foreseeable future are a complete boondoggle, at least for privet transportation. Any “breakthrough” that might make fuel cell powered autos practical is ether being suppressed tin-foil-hat style or it only exists in the mind of the hopeful.

I honestly whish that the free market crowd would start insisting that the US government end all subsidies, tax breaks and giveaways and let the market do the work you all say it should be doing. Petroleum is one of the most heavily subsidized industries in the US and that seems to be just OK by almost 100% of internet libertarians.

IOW, oil delivered in March 2006 is currently priced cheaper than oil delivered in Dec 2005. Dec 2009 oil is priced nearly $5 cheaper than Dec 2005. Odd that.

Either we're much closer to fuel cell breakthroughs than most think or there are other factors in play that most people simply don't look at or are simply unaware of. I'm guessing the latter is the reality here and I'm not giving any hints other than to enquire as to the number of bull spreads Mr. Cota has in place.

We may *well* be running out of oil - the market sure doesn't say so tho - and those with the most to gain and lose are playing with far more chips.

Oh - what the heck - here's a hint - take a look at the Baltic Dry Freight Index.....

Gee, I guess today's JUNE 17 closing RECORD PRICE of $58.50 a barrel shows that people are about as smart as Kevin Drum thinks they are. Futures prices have been above daily prices for months, too.
I guess reality trumps 'theory.'

And the other half here is I don't think it true that there isn't much left. I agree that the supply of currently attainable oil is going down. But I don't see this as the same issue you apparently do, James.

I'd point out that each time there's been a major price spike, that the response to the problem at each occasion, was two things; The technology for finding the stuff got better... and the inclination for developing sources we've always known were there, but for reasons of what I call greenie madness, have been unwilling to tap... ANWR, as an one example of many. These factors combined to not only add to capacity, but more importantly, add to supply diversity, which in turn is a natural control on prices.

The price flux as you mention can only occur if that supply diversity isn't there. It's the problem we ran into in '72. we figured we didn't need to dril herev at home very much because after all the Arabs would do it for us. Thus the greenies are happy. Even happier they were wehn we didn't build refining capacity. Thus our current problems.

As for the government, all that really needs doing is to get the government out of the way of such exploration drilling and refining. That is the biggest roadblock to our energy needs being handled... both now and in the future.